Blake landed on the library roof, folding his wings and crouching down so I could slide off him more easily.

The big red gryphon rolled over on his back, and after various stretches of various limbs he had changed himself back into a big red kangaroo.

I sat next to him, resting a paw on his belly, and looked down into his eyes.

He looked back, and then through me, up at the stars behind the dome. I rolled over on my back next to him, looking up likewise.

“I’m sure we don’t belong up here,” I said.

“Just because you’re not supposed to do something doesn’t mean you don’t do it,” Blake said. “It means you think about whether doing it is worth the consequences.”

I laughed. “You’re trying to corrupt me.”

“Not at all,” Blake said. “Just reminding you that you have the power of choice. Even if the consequences are dire, you can choose to risk them—a ‘Keep Out’ sign is not an impenetrable force field. So what are the consequences of being caught up here that are so dire anyway? What’s the scenario you imagine?”

“Well, for trespassing we might go to court…” I said. “Might be a fine, or even jailtime. A blemish on my public record.”

“That’s a worst case,” Blake said. “Isn’t it more likely that, say, someone might find us and say, ‘Hey kids, you don’t belong out here, come back inside,’ and we do? Or that we don’t get found at all?”

“You are trying to corrupt me,” I said.

“Only a little.” He turned to face me, resting one heavy arm on my chest.

And he moved his arm lower, his paw passing my stomach. “Maybe about… this much?”

He squeezed playfully.

“In a public place?” I said.

“Ah, but it isn’t public,” Blake said. “There’s a Keep Out sign. This place is private for the many who allow a piece of cardboard to be stronger than their willpower, when it should take a good deal more.”

Of course at this point returning to the eating contest was out of the question. The authorities were arriving and the patrons were leaving when they could, and none of the staff seemed keen on returning to the kitchen.

This was a shame, as my overstuffed gut had been burning through its intake and was rumbling hungrily again.

The confused thoughts of the human getting used to his new situation bounced around in my head as I went around the room, trying not to stumble as I got used to walking on four feet.

Once I thought I had it down, I went back to my workbench, looking through the other potions I kept handy.

What, this isn’t enough for you? Toby thought.

What point is there in ever stopping? I grabbed a viscous pink potion from the shelf, unstoppered it, and drank it down.

Gah, that tastes like rubber! came Toby’s thought, after a few moments.

So will we.

The change started working from the inside out, the only initial signs being a feeling of extreme lightness—an effect of the dissolution of the fat and internal organs—then a feeling of flexibility as the same happened to the bones, and a feeling of weakness as the muscles, too, evaporate into thin air, leaving the body a hollow shell, though perhaps still a bit solid to the touch, due to being filled with air.

Once all that prep work is out of the way, the visible changes begin—the potion starts working through the vacated hide and changing its substance, from ordinary flesh and fur into a specific rubberlatex designed for resilient springiness, sturdy unbreakability, and an appealing fresh scent, which took quite a lot of time to get just right.

Ars est celare artem, though, and I could feel Toby’s thoughts, taking the workmanship for granted and entirely focusing on the sensation of being turned into the hindquarters of a balloonish tigertaur.

He shuddered a bit at the thought. John shook his head. “You go to them before they die. And you’ll swap out their minds with a blank one.”

“A blank one?”

“Well, not that you’ll be carrying blank minds around… that would be all kinds of ethical trouble… but you’ve said it’s easier to do visualizing it that way instead of trying to trade something for nothing.”

“How long have you known me?”

“About sixty years.”

“You don’t look that old,” Ralph said. But really, once you knew, you kind of could—the gentle wrinkles around the eyes were, though not pronounced enough to convey a sense of age, were still a little too deep for a young man—once you knew, you couldn’t see the hints of gray around his temples as the signs of a stressful work life any longer—once you knew, he was clearly an old man, but not frail like I’d expect in a man who just admitted to being maybe 75—even once you knew, you could still not guess him any more than a very healthy fifty.

The door had opened out onto a countertop that was several paces across. There were rows and piles of books here, most books being taller than me, and even sitting on my golem I couldn’t see over many of them.

But there was no sign of a computer, and I couldn’t sense any connection to the network, either. Who would do research without the Internet?

“So what did you bring me here for, Munk?”

The golem carried me to a book that lay by itself on the counter. Unlike many of the other books, the title was in a script I recognized, even if it was Devanagari.

Now, while I did have to learn a bit of Sanskrit for alchemical studies, I was, in general, pretty hopeless at it.

The title, at least, was pretty straightforward; it was just चन्द्रिक, Moonlight.

“The doors—” the man started, confused for a moment. The doors were indeed of the push-to-open kind.

“I guess I should start here, then,” he said. “This is the Halkiadakis Institute, of course, I’m John, in this place we… well, everyone coming from the past comes through here. So it has to be kept traditional, so people aren’t disoriented.” He started walking again. “So different areas for different arrivals—this is the Modern area, and I work in the Medieval and sometimes the Primitive—”

“Wouldn’t time travelers be ready for new and strange futures?” Ralph said.

“Oh, we’re not here for time travelers,” John said. “I mean, I said everyone coming from the past, I mean everyone. That’s our mission here, our number one obligation.”

“What is?”

“To salvage everyone from the past. To have made death meaningless. To give everyone, every person who ever lived, another life free of death and hardship.”

“But—everyone does die—or did, back then, anyway—isn’t the past, the timeline, supposed to be immutable?”